A giant processing potato crop was denied the farmers by bad harvest weather. An unprecedented number of processing potatoes went unharvested in Manitoba due to harvest delays in September.
“We ended up with about 5,200 acres left in the ground,” Dan Sawatzky, manager of the Keystone Potato Growers Association told the Keystone Agricultural Producers advisory council meeting. “That’s unprecedented in the history of potatoes I guess in the last 50 years.”
There have been frozen potatoes and unharvested fields before, but 2018 was different. “It has never been as widespread as this and never the percentage of acreage. It’s quite a setback.”
Yields were expected to be the third highest on record, but September rains delayed harvest and a hard frost hit around October 10.
Manitobacooperator.ca explains how Manitoba is the second-largest potato-producing province in Canada. Losses of this scope will have an impact well beyond the local farm level.
